High Elf vs Dark Elf Focus Test is net voorbij, dit komt er nog(helemaal onderaan), uit het Betatest forum
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Join Date: Jul 2007
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Default [Next Beta Phase] Producer’s Letter
Hello Everyone,
We’re almost ready to re-open the WAR Beta, and I know that our Beta Community has been gnashing their teeth in anticipation. Guess what? They should be giddy with excitement because we’ll have an amazing amount of new features and enhancements in the game for them to test, as well as brand new Elf content for them to experience.
Before getting into content specifics, I wanted to share a quick word about our testing process as we’ll be doing things a little differently in this next phase of Beta II. Instead of bringing up the Beta server and leaving it up 24/7 for free play, we’ll be moving forward with a series of focused Beta events set around a specific concept or two. These events will last anywhere from 3-10 days and will enable us to gather specific, detailed feedback from our Beta Community in regards to specific features and locations. We’ll be bringing the server down between each event for a day or two in order to prepare for the next focused event. This will also give us time to process the feedback we receive and incorporate it in future events.
When Beta reopens, players will be treated to what we’re calling our “Dark Elf Sneak Peek”. During the first weekend, the Beta Community will be able to play through the Dark Elf starting and Tier 1 areas with two new careers. We are going to ease players back into the Beta to spend some quality time with the Dark Elves, as well as with many newly updated UI elements, such as the Tome of Knowledge. We are looking forward to hearing the community’s thoughts on these areas of the game.
The first of the two careers will be the Witch Elf. As the Dark Elf melee DPS career the Witch Elf personifies the sadistic pleasure the Druchii take in the evisceration of their enemies.
The second career will be the previously unannounced Disciple of Khaine. Dark priests of the Bloody handed god, The Disciples of Khaine can be found on the frontline of any Druchii assault. Using wicked ritual blades a Disciple harvests the essence of their enemy and offers it to Khaine in exchange for fell blessings and dark powers. These dark gifts allow the Disciple to tend to the needs of the Dark Elven host, mending bones, suppressing pain, and even raising critically injured warriors to fight again. For the Disciple of Khaine is the Shepard of war, ensuring the bloody slaughter can continue in the name of their dark god.
In small combats the Disciple is a master of shifting the balance of a fight, what they reap from their enemies they give to their allies. What was once you’re strength will soon become their own. Disciples must be watched carefully and their fell magic countered in short order or you will find your very essence trapped in servitude to Khaine.
We will also have a special treat for the Beta Testers as we just added in the ability for them to create Sorceresses as well. The Sorcerer/Sorceress is the Ranged DPS career for the Dark Elves. As noted in the November Newsletter they have the ability to enhance their damage capabilities by accessing Dark Magic spells. The flip side to this is that as they tap into Dark Magic more and more they increase the chance of actually causing a backlash of Magical energy damaging them in the process. It is a fine line that they have to dance between and fits perfectly within the mindset of the Druichii. Note that the male version of the Sorceress (the Sorcerer) will not be playable during the Dark Elf Sneak Peak. The art assets aren’t quite ready for him yet but will be the next time the Beta Community plays the Dark Elves.
Much of the testing over the next three months will be focused on RvR and the enhancements we are implementing to this system. The team has been diligently working on the Open Field RvR experience while the beta has been closed and they are anxious to debut the expanded Battlefield Objectives with ... wait for it ... new RvR Keeps.
While we aren’t ready to publicly discuss Keeps and their siege mechanics in great detail at this time, anyone that has taken part of a Keep battle in Dark Age of Camelot® will have an idea of what we have in store for WAR (though it should be noted that this new Keeps system will differ from the one found in DAoC). The addition of Keeps will bring additional and enhanced focus and meaning to Open Field RvR.
The updated Open World RvR environments will be what Beta Testers will be interacting with after the Dark Elf Sneak Peak. We will re-open the Empire and Chaos pairing for this section of the testing. We feel that the updated Battlefield Objectives and Keeps will be an interesting new focus for the RvR that will happen in WAR. One thing to note about this phase of testing is that the siege aspect of the Keeps will not be in place and ready for testing. We want to make sure that the base Keep concept works and works well before we add the additional complications of using siege equipment during keep battles. By specifically focusing the Beta Community on this aspect of the Open World RvR they will help us gather useful and pertinent information that will enable us to work towards perfecting their experience.
Player Careers have also received a lot of love and attention these past couple of months. One of the biggest issues raised during the beta was the perceived lack of differentiation between characters of the same career and same level. Why should every level 30 Warrior Priest look and play the same way? They shouldn’t!
We are actually approaching this issue from three different angles:
First, we’re introducing the concept of Career Mastery to better differentiate character abilities. This new system allows a player to customize their character’s skills to suit their desired play style. It allows an archetype career (Tank, Ranged DPS, etc.) to stay true to it role, while giving the player the flexibility to pursue specialized skills to make their character more unique.
Second, we are implementing our Trophy system which will allow a player to visually differentiation their character from another of the same career. This system has always been planned and is now being introduced into the game for the first time. In a nutshell, players are awarded visual bits, or Trophies, that they are then allowed to place on their character in pre-determined slots (the number of slots is determined by a characters level). Over the course of the game, you’ll literally be able to earn hundreds of these Trophies, way more than you’ll be able to equip at any one time, and display them in thousands of unique combinations.
Third, the ability for players to tint their armor pieces helps to round out their capability to make their characters stand out in a crowd. Tinting is where a player is able to take a dye and apply that to their armor changing certain color aspects of the armor. That way even if they are standing next to someone wearing the exact same armor, the player chosen tint allows them to be different from each other. While players will not be able to tint their armors right away they will be able to a little bit later in the Beta process.
This combination of the Trophy, Career Mastery, and Tinting systems, combined with our player creation options, numerous available armor sets, and weapon variety will help to ensure that no two players will ever look the same on the field of battle in WAR.
One final system to discuss and that is Public Quests. PQs are an exciting aspect of the PvE side of WAR, and they are something new and completely unique to our game. They have been very well received in beta, but we’ve been tweaking and enhancing them to make them even more engaging and fun. One of the biggest changes to PQs are the way we distribute rewards. We’ve implemented a new and improved reward system and we’ll be very interested to hear what the testers think of it. Gaining influence has also been tweaked and enhanced so that it takes a shorter amount of time to gain the influence that you need for the rewards that you want.
With all of these new additions and exciting new Elf content, we’re certainly going to be keeping the Beta Community busy well into the new year.
Speaking of the new year, you’ll be happy to know that we’ll be inviting the Guild Beta winners to join us in early ’08. They will be helping us test the newly implemented “Living Guild” features. Believe it when we say that guilds won’t just be a glorified chat channel in our game. They will have their own personality that the guild members can craft as they play WAR in addition to other new ideas make them a vital part of our game. You can expect this to happen around the time of the third focus test session.
Following the Empire and Chaos pairing focus test, with new Open Field RvR enhancements the beta community will be introduced to the newest edition to WAR: The High Elf and Dark Elf pairing. The Beta Community will have caught a glimpse of the Dark Elf starting area back in the beginning of December, but now over one month later, they will be able to experience nearly all of the Dark Elf and High Elf areas.
Players will now have access to three tiers of content and multiple classes from both sides of the Elven Conflict.
With the influx of new testers we hope to continue to gather more and more viable data in regards to what does and doesn’t’ work about the various aspects of the game.
After we are done with the High Elf and Dark Elf pairing focus testing we start our most unique segment of testing to date. We go into a series of weekends in which we engage the Beta Community to help us test out specific scenarios at the various Tier brackets. Each weekend we will configure the Beta server to allow players to create characters of a specific racial pairing at a specific level. This way the Beta Testers will just be able to test and enjoy the various scenarios that they will have access to on those specific weekends.
Finally we’ll round out this phase of the Beta Test with our final focused testing before we hit Phase III of our Beta. In this final segment of focus testing we’ll be enabling the Beta Community to test out and give feedback on one of the more innovative and important aspects of the “end game” of WAR itself… Capital Cities! We’ll be ending the focus testing with a WAAAGH! with the siege and capturing of Altdorf and the Inevitable City. Only seen in screen shots and concept art up until this point, the players will now be able to traverse these iconic cities and wage battles for their ownership. It should be exciting to say the least.
Well that’s it for now. The entire WAR team is extremely excited to re-enter beta and see how our testers react to the enhancements that have been made to the game. We are sure that the changes we have made (based on your feedback) will help to make the game glorious and fun for everyone. Thank you all again for helping us to make WAR the best it can possibly be, and for your commitment to us and the game.
See you all in WAR!
Jeff Hickman
Senior Producer
Warhammer Online
You can discuss here.
__________________
Kai Schober
German Community Manager
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Last edited by Sterntaler : 12/18/2007 at 21:18
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